Disability Services Provider – home based support services – service failures – aggrieved person left unmonitored for approximately two years – failure to provide appropriate monitoring and supervision – failure to provide services with reasonable care and skill – Health and Disability Commissioner (Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights) Regulations 1996 – Right 4(1)

F

Failure to provide services in a manner consistent with the needs of a person – whether ambiguity in “his or her needs” – whether to be equated with what the consumer wants - – Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights, Right 4(3)

J

Jurisdiction – a person in respect of whom an investigation has been conducted under Part 4 of the HDC Act – Health and Disability Commissioner found no breach of the Code on the part of the provider – whether statutory prerequisites to jurisdiction satisfied – Health and Disability Commissioner Act 1994, ss 50 and 51

Jurisdiction – defendant not a provider in respect of whom an investigation has been conducted under Part 4 of the HDC Act in relation to any action alleged to be in breach of the Code of Rights – no finding by Health and Disability Commissioner that there had been a breach of the Code of Rights on the part of the provider – whether preliminary assessment an investigation – Health and Disability Commissioner Act 1994, ss 33, 45, 50

Maintenance of professional boundaries – whether a necessary as opposed to a desirable component of the legal, professional, ethical and other relevant standards applicable to a natural health practitioner – Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights, Right 4(2)

S

Standard of care required of health care providers – reasonable care and skill – failing to provide services that complied with legal, professional and ethical standards – Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights, Right 4(1) and Right 4(2)

Standard of care required of health care providers – whether Tribunal can reject expert evidence of a particular accepted practice as not reasonable – whether Tribunal can set higher standard – whether standard of care in a western country must take into account fact that practitioner is practising alongside system of orthodox medicine and required to observe the same Code of Rights as registered medical practitioners

Standard of proof in proceedings under the Health and Disability Commissioner Act – meaning of balance of probabilities – whether serious nature of allegations made and of the consequences of upholding complaint requires a high degree of cogency – Health and Disability Commissioner Act 1994, s 54